Can neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light?

23 September 2011

News reports today suggest that researchers working on the Opera Collaboration, an experiment designed to test the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations, have evidence which shows that neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light.

The experiment which involves sending neutrinos through the ground from CERN, Geneva, toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away in Italy could have profound implications for modern physics.

The research announcement (PDF, 5 MB) has been met with intrigue but caution as the speed of light is the Universe's ultimate speed limit, and much of modern physics - as laid out in part by Albert Einstein in his special theory of relativity - depends on the idea that nothing can exceed it.